


First and Foremost

by chamyl



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Banter, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dry Humping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Established Relationship, Experienced Aziraphale (Good Omens), First Kiss, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Romance, Smoking, Time Travel, Touch-Starved Crowley (Good Omens), Virgin Crowley (Good Omens), Virginity, dear abby is it cheating if it's a clone of your husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27042148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamyl/pseuds/chamyl
Summary: “It’s Love, Crawly. Actual Love, as the humans feel it.”Crawly closes his eyes, delicate eyelashes against pale skin. “It hurts, a little.”“It does.”⏳Aziraphale has to go back in time to meet Crowley before he Fell and give him some important information.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 71
Kudos: 305





	First and Foremost

**Author's Note:**

> You know that ‘I wrote this for myself but you can read it too’ tag?  
> Yeah, this is it for me.
> 
> Many thanks to [entanglednow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow) for betaing and cheerleading and just being really great in general 🤍🤍🤍

The first thing he notices, much to his astonishment, is the very strong stink of nicotine.

“Are you smoking?”

Crowley – except he isn’t Crowley, or rather he is, but it’s before he chose the name Crowley – stiffens as he turns around to see who’s spoken.

“No,” he says, dropping the cigarette to the ground and hiding the stub under his foot. “Not right now. Who’re you?”

“Oh, sorry—where are my manners, of course, you don’t know me yet.” Aziraphale smooths down his waistcoat, extending his hand towards not-yet-Crowley, who stares at it uncomprehending. “Right. Haven’t been on Earth yet, you wouldn’t know. My name is Aziraphale. I’m here on very important business. But, first of all, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you a favour.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t asked yet.” Aziraphale gazes at this version of his lover and, he has to admit, it’s quite unsettling. He’s never seen Crowley looking so new and soft, his expression so open and trusting, long eyelashes over hazel eyes without a hint of suspicion in them. “Don’t you want to know what it is before you agree?”

Not-yet-Crowley shrugs, and Aziraphale’s gaze falls to the soft curls on his shoulders, the way they stand out against the shining white and gold of his robes – not unlike the ones Aziraphale used to wear himself, back in Eden. Or  _ will _ wear in Eden.

Time is a matter of opinion at the moment.

“Nope,” the angel says, “You’re a Principality. You rank higher than I do, so I have to help. Let’s make this quick, alright? I have things to get to.”

“Really?” Aziraphale can’t quite say he misses Heaven, now that he’s finally free. But  _ this _ Heaven, when everything was uncomplicated, Adam and Eve were still to be created, there was no Satan, and there was no right or wrong - he does miss it a bit. He'd felt whole, he'd felt right. Ironically, he'd never felt like that again until he turned his back on Heaven itself. “What things?”

“Ah, we’re experimenting. The Earth is our most complicated project so far. Last week, Malchediel found out what a ‘week’ is.”

“I see.” Aziraphale looks down at not-yet-Crowley’s foot. “And you just found out what cigarettes are, I assume?”

“Again,” not-yet-Crowley says, an eyebrow raised. “I’m not smoking right now. So, what can I help you with, Principality?”

“Ah, well. It’s a bit of a sensitive matter. Can we have complete privacy in here?”

Not-yet-Crowley snaps his fingers and Aziraphale feels like a door has just closed, even though they’re standing in a nondescript white space. “Shoot.”

“Right. So, this is going to sound weird, but first thing – I need you not to tell me your name.”

The angel looks at him as if he’s really regretting dropping his cigarette for this. “What? Why?”

“Well, it’s difficult to explain, but a person who’s very important to me has asked me not to find it out if I can help it. He said it’s a… well, very bad memory for him, and it would really spare him the headache if I didn’t snoop.”

“Alright.” Not-yet-Crowley raises his hands. “No names.”

“Thank you. Oh, but—well, it would be rather awkward to have a conversation with you without knowing what to call you.” Aziraphale looks around for inspiration, immediately being reminded that Heaven is completely blank, there’s no ‘inspiration’ to be found. Angels don’t need  _ inspiration _ . They don’t have to be creative, they just have to follow orders. “Would you mind terribly if I called you Crawly?”

“Crawly?” The young angel repeats. “Bit squirming-at-your-feet-ish, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale feels his heart constrict with sudden fondness. It  _ is _ his Crowley, this weird, soft angel who agreed to help him because he doesn’t know any better, who clings to a technicality to insist he wasn’t breaking the rules with his little cigarette break. It’s his Crowley before anything bad ever happened to him. Safe and whole, unguarded because he doesn’t know yet how badly he can be hurt. A Crowley that has never experienced rejection, or fear, or hopelessness.

It breaks Aziraphale’s heart a little to see him like this.

“Sure, fine,” not-yet-Crowley hurries to say, looking concerned at the undoubtedly strange expression on Aziraphale’s face. “Call me whatever, just don’t get upset.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ll try to make this quick.”

Crawly miracles two identical squares of white matter and gestures for him to sit.  _ Chairs _ , Aziraphale realises, or as close to chairs as Crawly can get without having ever seen one.

He takes a seat and clears his throat. “Listen, I know this is going to sound absolutely unbelievable, but I come from the future.”

Crawly, who has not yet heard this line in a million movies, books, and second-grade tv shows, blinks at him, his interest piqued. “The future?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale twists the ring around his little finger. “In the future, you and I, well… we’re together. We live happily among the humans.”

“The humans?” Crowley perks up, clearly enthusiastic at the thought. “So She did manage to create them! How are they doing?”

“Er.” Aziraphale clears his throat again. “Good. Good. That’s not the point right now, and I’m afraid I can’t stay for long. Crowley – that would be you, the you from the future, is what I mean… he’s sent me here with a message for you, and he’s keeping the way open for me to return.”

Crawly, incredibly, does not question this. Rather, he nods, gesturing for Aziraphale to keep talking.

He really is new.

“You don’t need to know the specifics, and actually, I think it’s far better if I don’t tell you anything besides what you strictly need to know.” Crowley had been very clear: this is their only chance. Later than this moment, and Crawly will start Questioning. Any earlier, and he wouldn’t have any notion of what Earth and humans even are. Aziraphale can’t mess this up. “Many, many years from now – oh dear, has time been invented already?”

“Yes,” Crowley replies. “Just last week. I mentioned it.”

“Right, yes. Many years from now, I was saying, you and I will receive a prophecy. And I need you to remember this: what the prophecy means is that we have to swap places. Quite literally. Everything will be fine if we do.”

“Seems simple enough,” Crawly replies. “Don’t know if I’ll remember though, if it’s that far in the future.”

“Oh, you will. My Crowley assured me of that.” Crawly gives him a weird look, but doesn’t say anything else, so Aziraphale stands up. “Right. That was all. I can go now, and everything will be alright. Thank you for your time, Crawly.”

Crawly nods, and Aziraphale turns to leave.

“Wait.” The younger angel steps closer to him, a hand extended towards Aziraphale without touching him. “You said—when you say we are  _ together, _ you mean…”

Aziraphale smiles fondly. He can give him this much. He can give him the hope that there will be something waiting for him, on the other side of all the pain and anguish. “I mean  _ together _ . I mean I would trust you with my life, Crawly. You’re the only being who’s ever truly understood me, who ever even cared about me enough to try and understand me.” Aziraphale reaches out to squeeze his hand. “To me, you are the brightest star.”

Crawly blushes, a deep crimson high in his cheeks, and Aziraphale watches, fascinated. He’s never seen Crowley blushing like that. Maybe he doesn’t allow himself to nowadays.

Crawly squeezes his hand back. “So you… are you my soulmate?”

Right. Aziraphale had forgotten the amount of lies Heaven taught them to keep them in check. The promise that there would be a companion for them, if they behaved. A partner to build a nest with, to be happy with for all of eternity. “Insofar as anyone is anyone’s soulmate… yes, Crawly. You are mine, and I am yours.”

Crawly’s eyes are full of indescribable emotion now, hope and longing and a tinge of sorrow. “When will I see you again?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know.” Suddenly, Aziraphale is incredibly, deeply sad for him. This Crawly, so naive and trusting. So innocent, so easy to manipulate and trick. Just like Aziraphale himself was, not too long ago. “We’ll meet in a beautiful Garden. You’ll know it’s me as soon as you see me, you’ve told me so yourself. Oh, Crowley—”

“Crawly,” the angel corrects him with a smile.

“Right, of course. Oh, I’m so sorry to leave you here, my dear. I’m sorry—”

“Hey, no.” Crawly puts a warm hand on his shoulder. “I trust I take care of you, in the future, don’t I? You’re my soulmate.”

“Yes, yes of course.” Aziraphale smiles at him, though tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “You take excellent care of me, and I try to do the same for you.”

Crawly seems to be seeking something in his face, he looks at Aziraphale’s eyes, at his mouth, at his eyes again. “Can you…”

“Yes,” Aziraphale replies immediately, just like Crawly agreed to help him without even hearing what he was asking for first. “If there’s anything I can do for you—”

“Kiss me?” Crawly asks, his voice suddenly quiet, so very quiet. “I just—we’ve been forbidden from getting too close to one another, and yet they have given us these bodies to ‘get used to them’ before the Earth is even finished. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? And I thought—since you’re my soulmate, perhaps…”

Aziraphale forgets how to breathe for a moment. Would his Crowley object if he kissed him? Surely not. This is still Crowley, after all. And the angel is looking at him with eyes full of hope, and affection, and yearning, and Aziraphale doesn’t have it in him to disappoint him. And, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t want Crowley’s first kiss to be with some random angel that might not even care about him. Or worse, with some random human, who will eventually die and leave him forever.

It’s just a kiss, he reasons. It’s not a big deal. They’ve kissed thousands of times.

He lifts Crawly’s hand, presses his mouth to his delicate knuckles. Crawly’s lips part as he stares down at him, enchanted. He’s so beautiful, he always has been, and even though it doesn’t feel exactly like talking to his own Crowley, there are still bits of him in there, in the way his jaw tenses when he’s nervous, in the carefully braided locks of hair that, Aziraphale is sure, go against Heaven’s regulations on grooming.

He puts his hand on Crawly’s cheek, and the angel closes his eyes. It’s likely – it’s  _ certain _ – that he's never experienced something so intimate. Aziraphale gives him a moment to enjoy that simple contact before he leans in and presses his lips to a sharp cheekbone.

Crawly reaches up to put his hands on Aziraphale’s chest, clutching at his waistcoat. “My stomach… my knees, my face… everything feels—weird.”

Aziraphale lets out a soft, amused breath against his cheek. “It’s Love, Crawly. Actual Love, as the humans feel it.”

Crawly closes his eyes, delicate eyelashes against pale skin. “It hurts, a little.”

“It does.”

Crawly takes a deep breath, then shifts on his feet and, much to Aziraphale’s surprise, takes the initiative and slots their mouths together. It’s a bit clumsy, but Crawly is delicate and tentative, his lips are soft, and his breath is gentle as it tickles Aziraphale’s upper lip.

Crawly makes a hurt noise low in his throat, his arms sliding around Aziraphale’s chest to hold him closer. He breaks the kiss to take a breath, and stares intently at Aziraphale’s mouth for a few long seconds, before he dips his head again and slowly licks along his bottom lip.

Aziraphale gasps in surprise, and Crowley takes that as an invitation to explore further, his warm, wet tongue sliding inside the angel’s mouth easily.

Aziraphale is responding before he knows it. It feels perfectly natural to kiss him back, he’s done it a million times. When his brain catches up with what’s happening, he realises he doesn’t actually want to stop. It’s special, this kiss before he says goodbye and leaves Crawly alone to deal with everything that’s to come, and he doesn’t want it to end.

Crawly makes a helpless sound against his mouth and clings harder to him, and Aziraphale doesn’t have it in him to deny him. This is all Crawly will have to sustain him though the Fall. The awareness that somewhere, sometime, he’ll meet his ‘soulmate’ again. That he’ll feel happy and whole and healthy again.

They fall into a desperate, urgent kiss, Aziraphale’s hands pushing Crawly’s stray locks of hair away from his face, Crawly’s fingers caressing the back of his neck, his cheeks, his shoulders. He kisses Aziraphale as if he’ll die if he doesn’t, as if every eager, secret, human feeling inside him has been awakened at last.

“Aziraphale,” Crawly moans, pushing against him with the entire length of his body. Suddenly, Aziraphale’s back hits a wall that wasn’t there a second ago. Crawly slots his leg between Aziraphale’s and begins grinding against his thigh.

He’s unmistakably hard under the robes, stiff and frantic and clinging to Aziraphale with all he’s got. And Aziraphale – he could say  _ no _ , he could pull away, but he doesn’t want to. Because this is still his Crowley, and he loves him deeply, dreadfully, and every part of him aches to give him anything he might desire. He can’t protect him from what’s to come, but he can do this, he can give him this.

“Yes,” he pants against Crawly’s lips, arms encircling his waist to hold him close, to hold him even closer. “My gorgeous, precious darling. Go ahead, keep going, take anything you want.”

“’ziraphale—!” Crawly keeps rubbing desperately against his thigh and Aziraphale loses track of time, he just knows his lover is here, safe and warm in his arms, the hot breath of his moans tickling behind his ear, his nails digging into his flesh. Until Crawly’s eyes go impossibly wide as his entire body tenses and he’s crying out loud, the sound of his pleasure echoing in the empty room, rattling Aziraphale down to his very core.

He lets Crawly rest his forehead against his shoulder, rubs his back as he calms down.

“That was— _ wow _ ,” Crawly says between laboured breaths, and Aziraphale thinks he might have never heard Crowley say  _ ‘wow’  _ about anything. Maybe once, sarcastically. “Why would this be forbidden? It felt so good.” He lets out a short laugh, muffled against the soft material of Aziraphale’s waistcoat. “That counts as sex, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, definitely, yes. You had an orgasm against my thigh.”

Crawly blushes violently, pulling back. “I hadn’t planned that, it was so good, and I—”

“It’s alright, Crawly.” Aziraphale kisses the corner of his lips, smiles at him. “More than anything, I want you to have a good memory of this. You didn’t do anything wrong. I, ah… I enjoyed it very much.”

“Yeah. Me too.” And there it is, the shit-eating grin Aziraphale could recognise in a crowd of thousands. “Won’t the other me be jealous?”

“Well.” Aziraphale cleans him with a snap of his fingers. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

* * *

Crowley waits patiently, sitting on the sofa in the living room of their cottage, reflecting on how they ended up in this situation.

After the Fall, well – there’d been so much pain it’d left him entirely numb. Reality felt dull and fuzzy. He had scattered memories of what happened, and didn’t wish to dwell on any of them.

And then he met Aziraphale in the Garden, and something  _ clicked _ , like he’d met him before, like he could trust him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure Aziraphale was it for him.

It was much later that the actual memory came back.

It was the night after the Apocalypse, and Crowley had invited Aziraphale back to his. In the silence of Crowley’s flat, they finally collided into a hungry kiss, tired and dirty and worried as they were. And Crowley heard Aziraphale’s voice in his head, clear as day.

_ What the prophecy means is that we have to swap places. Quite literally. _

He was immediately distracted by the hot press of the angel’s lips on his neck, but afterwards – as Aziraphale lay next to him in bed, snug against his side, Crowley slowly started putting the pieces together.

He told Aziraphale what he thought the prophecy meant. He left the rest out.

But, once they saved each other from the respective headquarters, there was still one thing left to do.

He reckoned that if he mentioned to Aziraphale that he was about to send him on a time-travelling mission to make out with his former self, there was a very real possibility the angel would laugh in his face or, much worse, take him seriously. And what if Aziraphale approached Crowley’s former self with nervousness, or caution? What if he altered the past in ways that would have repercussions on the present?

What if Aziraphale never told Crowley about the prophecy? What if they didn’t swap places? What if Gabriel forced the actual Aziraphale into the burning column of Hellfire? Crowley’s head hurt just thinking about all the implications. He couldn’t risk that, no matter what.

He hears the tinkling that signals his angel is coming back and stands up to greet him. He suspects there was no right choice to make here, but he can’t help being sorry he didn’t warn Aziraphale properly. Even though warning him could have altered their timeline, even though it could have put the angel himself in great danger.

As soon as Aziraphale appears, he has a terribly guilty expression on his face. Crowley doesn’t know what for. If he remembers correctly, he’d been very pushy about the whole thing, knowing full well Aziraphale was taken. Taken by his future self, but still.

“Thank you,” he says, before Aziraphale can open his mouth to speak. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Thought it’d be unwise.”

The angel stares at him for a few long moments, as if he’s understanding many things at once. Slowly, he begins to nod. “Yes. It would have been. But I don’t think I deserve to be thanked for anything, Crowley, it was hardly a hardship.” Then he clears his throat. “I’m sorry too, darling.”

Crowley shakes his head. “What for? I don’t think it counts as cheating if it’s still me, does it?” He waves a hand in the air, as if chasing away all of Aziraphale’s worries, and tries for a smile. “Though that guy better not try to show his face around here anytime soon.”

Aziraphale smiles back, softly. “Not for that. But for the fact that you had to go through so much all by yourself.”

Crowley tries to shrug it off, as he always does when his Fall from Grace is mentioned. “We both did,” he reminds him, taking his hand.

“Yes.” Aziraphale gives his fingers a gentle squeeze. “But I had you by my side, all the time. I couldn’t have done it otherwise.”

Crowley swallows around the knot in his throat. He doesn’t know what to say. “I—”

“Let me take you out to dinner,” Aziraphale interrupts, and Crowley is so very thankful for the change of topic. Though he suspects the angel had done it on purpose, because he knows how tough this is for him to talk about. “Anywhere you want to go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo, I have to give a few credits here. First of all, this happened because I couldn’t get [zera](https://zerachin.tumblr.com/)’s [angel Crowley design](https://zerachin.tumblr.com/post/629981125480202240/so-summerofspock-is-doing-a-fic-on-an-idea-where) out of my mind. Don’t know if I ever will tbh.
> 
> This Crowley design was in turn inspired by [summerofspock](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/), who’s writing [a great fic](https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/26572573/chapters/64783192) where Crowley is split into his angel and demon sides.
> 
> And, lastly, I have to thank [MrsNoggin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsNoggin) and [entanglednow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow) for their excellent, excellent taste in porn, and in particular link to entanglednow’s [dry humping fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26547763).
> 
> ~~Good ideas spread like bad STDs~~.


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